When I first moved to Japan, the main thing I was worried about was whether I would be able to make friends. Growing up, you’re surrounded by your peers at school, university and work, so these things tend to come more naturally. But as an adult there might be a time where you need to ask yourself, how do I make friends?
Personally I’m an introvert, and I wouldn’t say I find it super easy to make friends. But my advice (that has worked for me), is to first find a hobby, and then find friends from that. That’s actually one of the reasons why I started hiking! A hobby in common gives you something to talk about, and with hiking you don’t have to talk all the time - there’s plenty of time to just enjoy the silence of nature together (an introvert’s dream). I tend to find my hiking friends are more on my wavelength as well. It takes a certain kind of person to wake up at 4am, travel 3 hours, and then go on an 8 hour hike.
And I think the easiest way to make hiking friends is to repeatedly attend group events. With a larger group of people there’s more opportunities to click with one or more people there. But don’t expect to go to one event and suddenly come away with a lot of new friends - I find coming back to the same group’s events a number of times increases your odds. You’ll become a bit more familiar with other returning members (and they’ll become familiar with you!), making it easier to form a friendship.
Meetup.com
Meetup.com is the best place to find hiking friends in Japan, especially if you can only speak English. The largest hiking Meetup group in Tokyo is Jalan Jalan, which has over 7000 members and does quite a few events. Their secret is that they have multiple organisers who each make events based on their own personal preferences. Depending on the organiser, you’ll be looking at a relaxing hike to a local mountain, or harder 6 - 8 hour hikes as far afield as Fukushima.
I haven’t been using Meetup for a while now, so it seems like some of the groups I used to participate in are no longer on there, but the Tokyo Hiking Group is also another good one.
Meetup tends to be a mix of foreigners, some Japanese people who may be looking to practice their English, and occasionally a couple of short-term stay tourists as well.
Funnily enough, even if you attend events run by different groups, the Meetup community is smaller than you think, so you’ll eventually run into someone you’ve already met in a different group.
Most events have an organising fee of 500 or 1000 yen.
Yamarii
If you’re looking for Japanese hiking friends in particular, the only app I know of for that is Yamarii. These tend to be small, one-off events rather than groups with regular events like on Meetup. Since the number of attendees tend to be less, I find they tend to have more options where the organiser will drive you by car to the trailhead. So the one upside is you’ll get the opportunity to go to more niche mountains.
You’ll need to speak Japanese to use it - don’t expect anyone to speak English - and generally you’ll just split the costs of transport among you.
Since these are less fixed groups, I find that once an event is over, and if it went well, the same members will attempt to schedule another event in the future off of the app.
🥾As general etiquette, if someone is giving you a lift in their car, don’t forget to bring a spare pair of shoes! Japanese hikers tend to wear a light pair of sneakers or sandals while in the car, and then change into their hiking shoes at the trailhead. One reason for this is that its more comfortable, but the main reason is that you don’t want to track dirt into someone else’s car.
♨️ It’s also quite normal to stop off at a nearby onsen after the hike, so remember to bring along a towel and a change of clothes as well.
Hiking circles
“Circles” are another option and the Japanese word for hobby groups. Universities tend to have a lot of circles, but otherwise you’ll be looking for what’s called a 社会人サークル or “working adult circle”. If you Google for this you may be able to find a hiking circle that’s running near you.
I’ve never attended a circle directly, but one event I attended from Yamarii was run by someone who runs a circle. I guess they were looking for new members, so it was sort of like a “if you like this hike, why don’t you join our circle?”
Personally, if you can find one that’s a good fit for you, that’s great! The one event I joined the leader was quite strict - they had a specific person designated as the leader, and one to be at the back of the group. For safety reasons, I guess it’s a good idea, but I didn’t really like how strict it felt.
Yamap
So I’m a big fan of the hiking app YAMAP, and they do have a communities section where people can start threads looking for fellow hikers. Sometimes there are people promoting their own LINE groups. If you can join one of those, people will attempt to self-organise events in that group. Overall I wouldn’t say this is a great source for events though.
The one advantage of YAMAP is that since you can see a person’s hikes, so you can get a sense of their hiking style and speed to see if they will be a good match for you.
If you’re brave, you could also directly message someone and ask them on a hike - I wouldn’t say yes if a guy asked for safety reasons, but I did go on a hike with a girl from YAMAP and she turned out to be perfectly lovely. Of course if going on hikes with just one other person, I would always recommend either meeting them for a coffee first, or to do the hike on a well-populated trail.
Bumble BFF
I’m mentioning this as one final option, but it’s not really one I could recommend. Bumble is the largest and best dating app in Japan if you’re looking for English speakers, and they also have a “BFF” version where you can swipe on friends based off of common interests.
You might have to do a lot of swiping to find someone who wants to hike, and do a lot of small chitchat before you can get to the point where you go on a hike together though so I don’t think it’s worth the effort. I did go on a hike once or twice with someone I met on there, and she was pretty cool - but then I think she ended up ghosting me, which is pretty par for the course with apps, I guess.
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